Hailing from Calgary, Alberta, Canadad, CoolIT Systems has made a reputation for itself dealing exclusively with high-end cooling products. What separates them from most is their integration of thermoelectric cooling (TEC) with liquid cooling. Today, we'll be checking out their flagship Freezone CPU cooler.

Now, when you think "liquid cooling" your heart may be stressing a little because they are usually cumbersome to set up or there is the fact that you are dealing with fluids, and you can never be too sure about those. With the Freezone, practically all those worries goes away because CoolIT has designed it to be a fully integrated, all-in-one package with simple user intervention. That is, one does NOT have to deal with the long and tedious task of finding an optimal spot for a reservoir, feeding the tubes, cutting the tubes to the right size, setting up the pump, making sure things are out of the way...you get the idea.

The Freezone is meant to be installed (with care as always) in a very short amount of time by anyone with a screwdriver and a knack for handling computer parts. Well, we'll see if that's true in short order.

Specifications

• Socket Types: AMD Socket 754 / 939 / 940 /AM2 or Intel Socket 478 / 775
• Case compatibility: ATX chassis with 120mm or 92mm rear fan exhaust
• CPU block: 42mm x 42mm x 17mm, copper, 195g
• Thermal Control Module: 89mm x 53mm, 30g
• Heatsink/Radiator: 122mm x 65mm x 90mm, anodized alloy, 850g
• Thermoelectric Cooler: 6x solid-state heat pad wafers, 40mm x 40mm x 3.5mm (each), 20g (each)
• TEC heat exchangers: 121mm x 41mm x 12mm, anodized alloy, 80g (each)
• Fan: 92 x 92 x 25 mm, 12VDC
• Fan Noise Levels: 26dBA to 37dBA
• Pump & Reservoir: 50mm x 50mm x 75mm, 12VDC, <15dBA, 360g
• Total Weight: Infinity Billion (about 2kg when you add things up)

How Does it Work and The Peltier Effect

A thermoelectric cooler (or heater, depending upon your point of view) transfers heat with a specific gradient via electricity. It is the amount of current (flow rate of electrons) that determines the amount of thermal conduction. And because it uses a DC current, the direction of heat flow may be simply changed with the positive and negative wire leads. Conversely, you could generate a current if you heat up the thermoelectric device. All this mumbo jumbo is also known as the Peltier Effect, and no it isn't the other half of that Canadian Figure Skating Duo.

In the case of the Freezone, the cooling takes place over a series of transfers. From the CPU, the heat is transferred to the CPU block and then to the closed-off, circulating coolant. As the coolant heats up, the TECs exchange heat quickly to the radiator heatsink. It is not very different from a conventional internal liquid cooling system except for the TEC-assisted heat conduction from the liquid to the heatsink. What this means is that the liquid will remain as cool as possible, grabbing as much heat from the CPU block as possible. The bottleneck for cooling is no longer between the liquid and the CPU block but between the heatsink, the fan, and the environment.

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